When the Woman, Life, Freedom movement broke out in September 2022, following the death of Mahsa Amini detained for an "ill-fitting" veil, Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha were in the middle of filming My Favourite Cake, in Tehran, without authorization. Very quickly, the protest upended their project. "Some members of our crew had joined the protest, while others were arrested and jailed," said Behtash Sanaeeha, who spoke to us from Tehran. And it became clear that every time filming was interrupted, "we had to finish this film, it was our support for the movement," said Maryam Moghaddam.

The project was launched two years before Amini's death and tells the story of a 70-year-old woman living alone in Tehran who sets out to rediscover love: a taboo subject in a political system where everything, even the most mundane aspects of life, is under surveillance. The authors of Pardon (2020) have dared to show women without veils, dancing and drinking scenes and open discussions about religion and politics. "We wrote the script long before the uprising, but we had already wanted to end the hypocrisy," said Sanaeeha. "Iranian films show women sleeping and waking up veiled. We were ashamed of perpetuating this lie," Moghaddam added.

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